Large construction structures often need to be scaled for various purposes. For example, large towers are often scaled to change or improve equipment, modify or reinforce the structure of the tower, and maintain the tower. New innovations and increased demands have created a need to add additional weight to these types of towers. Often, it is necessary or desirable to reinforce the towers to accommodate the additional weight.
Many cell towers or other similar support structures, such as light poles, structural columns, and bridge supports may be mounted on a support platform that is supported on foundation bolts that are anchored into a concrete foundation in the ground. Typically, there is a space below the support platform and above the concrete foundation that ranges in height and is typically from about 1 inch to about 4 inches in height, depending on the application. As technology has advanced, there has been an increasing demand to place additional equipment on these types of towers. For example, when upgrading a tower from 3G to 4G mobile telecommunications technology additional equipment is needed, which adds additional weight to the tower. However, since the towers were likely not originally designed to support this additional equipment, the added weight of the additional equipment might exceed the weight tolerances of the towers and make them unsafe to use. However, the cost and time of constructing new cell towers makes replacing the existing towers with newer, stronger towers impractical.
What is needed, therefore, is a method for reinforcing existing support tower that would enable those towers to safely support the weight of additional equipment.